Dear Editor,
I share a phrase from a BBC news report on the UK’s Supreme Court decision on the mighty row going on over there re Brexit. One MP came up with this gem: “the mother of parliaments by the father of lies.” In view of what is happening in Guyana, all Guyanese should have one idea or another of what that means, where such fits almost perfectly. The problem is that it doesn’t.
I say this, because the first questions that come to mind are: who is who; and which one is which? Mother or father? The sacred maternal proving ground or the pathological paternal liar? On this one, Guyanese should have a long holiday; all the way past Christmas in November and into March next year (I suspect). Yes, but the issue remains: who is ministering in the sacred holiness of motherhood and who is the wastrel of irresponsible, deceiving fatherhood? That is going to be a long story in this overbaked land.
I think I hear the usual suspects being dressed up and trotted out for ready, heady consumption. Names branded in effigy and infamy on placards, Facebook, and the grotesque verbal cartoons that make the rounds in bars and cars, and penthouses and bottom houses. Mother and father: is it government or opposition? More pointedly, the eyewitness identification of leader of one or the other? It can’t be both of them; or neither of them. Who is the violator and sinner here?
The Tories and Whigs (they still call them that there, don’t they?), and the Lords and Ladies are going back to Whitehall; Westminster might be more helpful. We are going nowhere over here. Nobody listening. Nobody following orders. Only their own interpretations in the complete independence (and supremacy) of the political arm in this society. Everyone has appointed himself as the best judge of what should apply. Now that is the freedom that comes from real emancipation. Comes from long practice; the studious devotion to tribal duties, above all else.
Here in Guyana, the political class is an aristocracy all by itself: unheeding, untouchable, and unerring, too. I know this one thing: mother and father drag all the children down in the gutter along with them. It has been a savaging ride, with more of the same, and worse, promised. I offer this because there is nothing sacred in this country. Not parliament. Not judges. Not the will of the people. By the way: who are they?
I must correct myself. There is one sacrosanct thing in this country. It is that constitution. The Ten Commandments or Magna Carta, it is not. On the contrary, it facilitates and empowers every manner of mischief that can be conjured and delivered to a gullible Guyanese public. Thus, there is the madness that is now national in scale and reach. Everyone is tainted, bar none; and that includes those who want nothing to do with it.
There is precedent for this kind of sleight of hand that leads to a lot of bad blood; generations of them. I suggest revisiting the tale of Esau and Jacob. The latter was a conniver of no mean order; he had help from his mother. Maybe that was who the MP from the Scottish Highlands was talking about; I understand the aroma is stronger over there from all that fermented malt and hops. Still, Jacob was smart enough to show a clean pair of heels and beat for the bushes to elude the brotherly wraths he had unleashed.
Regrettably, Guyanese have no such sense. They are stuck with the same mother(s) and father(s), who lead them down political primrose paths. No wonder people in the other regions do not want their children to mix with us (and ours). Fix your problems yourself. Don’t bring yuh dutty business hay fuh give wee headache. Even the majesty of the law confessing to lack of sovereignty. Unlike those MPs warring over Brexit, who have something to go back to, we have nothing. Well, there is always mommy and daddy. With parents like these, what could anyone expect of the children? It promises to be a rollercoaster last quarter. Might be a titanic one; moment, that is.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
